Blockchain Uses in Healthcare

April 23, 2019

Currently, the healthcare industry in the United States suffers from a multitude of problems. With staffing shortages to cyberattacks, increasing healthcare costs, and over billing, the medical industry is in dire need of a major overhaul.

Recently, Blockchain has emerged as a catalyst for change in the medical industry, demonstrating similar potential to artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics as one of the leading options to solve healthcare most troubling issues.

To understand how blockchain can enhance the healthcare industry, here are several use cases that demonstrate how Project Hydro’s blockchain protocols could be leveraged to solve healthcare industry challenges by bringing together the many advantages of blockchain.

Medical Records

Since Blockchain ensures the protection of data, it can be used by the healthcare institutions to store health information of the patients. To do this, they have to simply sign each record and submit it to the Blockchain.

It will clearly provide a view on who was the last one to access a medical record and who made any modifications to the stored data. Ice is our Hydro protocol that allows verification and document signing that lets users to stamp, authenticate, verify, and seal any document or contract.

Security

Additionally, Blockchain prevents third parties from sharing medical data. Healthcare management can verify data with Blockchain, confirm the authenticity of clinical results from research, and ensure that data compliance is enforced according to the strict healthcare industry standards. Patients could use the Hydro 2FA app to verify their identity and healthcare companies could implement Snowflake and Ice protocols to authenticate and verify medical records.

Drug Monitoring

Drug manufacturers and suppliers can use Blockchain for the registration of their medical products and prescription drugs. From the drug production and manufacturing process to final delivery to patients, the Blockchain may be leveraged to track the entire healthcare supply chain cycle, allowing consumers and supply chain actors to identify the origins of any issue. This will help to reduce the number of counterfeit drugs that are being sold to unknowing patients.

Drug manufacturers can implement Ice, Mist, and Hydro 2FA protocols. Mist artificial intelligence solutions could be used to create data modeling of drugs being manufactured. Snowflake and a verification of receipt with Ice, could be used to verify that the end user is actually the right patient for the prescription drug to be dispersed to. Hydro 2FA could be used to secure patients records by safely confirming that the patient is indeed the right patient.

Consent

The permission of the patient to share information between third parties and the healthcare institutions can be saved in their records on the Blockchain, thereby removing any possibility of misuse or confusion. Ice is our Hydro protocol that allows verification and document signing that lets users to stamp, authenticate, verify, and seal any document or contract.

Reinforcement of Positive Healthcare Practices

Blockchain projects have demonstrated through the creation of successful services and apps that blockchain can be leveraged to offer tokenized incentives to users. This can encourage healthy activities like following a healthy diet, hitting the gym 3 times a week, or just cycling around town.

Hydro protocols can be leveraged to ensure fair disbursement of incentives by securely verifying unique user identity while protecting sensitive information. Hydro also allows for coupons and many other incentive models so that businesses can easily build audiences and engage users.

Insurance

Health insurance is a universal requirement in many countries but is expensive and inefficient, especially in the USA, often costing taxpayers more than they can get back in health care.

Moreover, over the past few years, both citizens and insurance providers have struggled with mounting penalties, fraud, and bottlenecks within the broader healthcare system. Insurers are exploring Blockchain technology to store real-time updates of patient information.

It is expected that such a system will help healthcare providers and insurers to avoid hefty fines resulting from out-dated record keeping practices. Moreover, it will enhance the quality of patient care. Ice is a Hydro protocol that allows verification and document signing that allows users to stamp, authenticate, verify, and seal any document or contract.

Clinical Trials

Data verification is crucial for medical testing because lives depend on it. It is necessary that the medical test data is 100% verified in order to make sure that there is no possibility of any fraudulent activity or misreading of data.

The cryptographic structures of Blockchain can timestamp data, which can assist researchers in decreasing their expenses to a large extent.

Vaccine administration records

This is a very topical problem (New York example), due to the migratory movements of a population that is unvaccinated. Many diseases that historically have been deleted from our civilization are emerging nowadays with virulence.

Having a centralized registry of vaccinations would be a great step forward in the control of diseases, allowing the identification of population niches susceptible to vaccination campaigns, avoiding unnecessary re-vaccinations, and improving the obsolete vaccination records that currently exist, and which are normally local area.

Blockchain allows easily to have a vaccine administration records to be publicly accessible.